1999 0-7734-3208-6In 1949 the young scholar was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison camp on the charge of “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda .” In 1979 he was fired from the Academy’s Institute for Oriental Studies after KGB made a search in his private apartment confiscating “anti-Soviet literature .” Prison camp stories and sketches by I.M. Filshtinskii, unified by the author’s personality and destiny, explain prison camp life in a completely new light, different from all the literature on the subject up to now. The natural curiosity which allowed him to survive under inhuman conditions, has helped him to depict the prison camp as a “necessary component, base of the system…”